Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

584. Observing life, 9

(Nightmare)It takes my mind away from them.

I land in a wide opening of tall ruins covered with moss, close to a segment of the giant snake. Its pale skin and scales are covered with dust and stains. It travelled alright.

My body is useful to travel as well, but not to work. I let it roll itself down in a corner of the ruins and sleep, while I stand on my own again.

I’m free. And the object of my curiosity is just there.

I touch it. I’m going through it since I’m not really material as my mere shape.

I begin my study of this unique organism. I spread thin amounts of my will through its body to map it.

I slowly see the picture of the wondrous thing being drawn around me as glowing lines stretching in the dark.

I don’t have much experience with old snakes so I’m limited in what I can compare.

The drawing of its body, starting from where I am, runs endlessly towards head and tail, and it still goes... More than a kilometre long alright.

I’m surprised not to discover any heartbeat at all.

The blood of this beast is closer to sea water than mammal blood as well. It would be colourless if spilled.

The vascular system is most unusual to me. There’s no clear distinction between veins and arteries. There are pinpoints on the skin everywhere for oxygen to be captured from the air directly, with just tiny vessels behind.

It’s just a one simpler vascular system, over dimensioned.

A huge pipe of this sea water takes most of the body section. It spreads into thinner vessels irrigating the innumerable muscles and small organs towards the skin.

But simply put, blood doesn’t really flow in there. It really doesn’t work like mammals or birds.

I think it lives through a form of osmosis. As long as the blood and inner water carry a concentration of nutrients and oxygen above the requirements, everything is ready to move. And when some muscles or organs use something, the balance soon re-establish itself with a stretch of the body.

It’s a very unusual metabolism to me. But I understand more and more how this allowed it to grow and live at such volumes.

My scan finally reaches the head and tail. Well. The heads... One on each end.

I also notice the spongy muscles surrounding every blood vessel dissemination and circulating as a coil around the main body pipe. They’re not exactly hearts but these muscles and tissues allow the beast to keep the fluids circulating whilst the body twists itself onto varying heights. They’re active to balance the pressure when there are differences.

So it can maintain some parts of its body higher than others without risks of waters flowing down and rupturing the skin. Although there’s surely a limit to this ability that isn’t very high, it’s interesting for me.

And as an end point to these foamy muscles to keep the fluids stables, each end of this beast has a head, with two sets of mouth each. An external mouth holds the tongue and teeth. It does have mostly snake-like features. And a little further inside the throat is the second mouth leading to the stomach. And beyond, the digestive system is disseminated along the start of the main watery pipe.

Each end holds a head and a brain. They both seem asleep despite my intrusion currently.

In just a few years, that thing came to be and develop its odd organism. It then migrated west, across England and the ocean...

My curiosity is the curse Rose Blume has inflicted upon me. It brought me here, and wishing to understand even more than what meets the eye.

Curse you...

~

I’ve seen the populations of algae and microorganisms living in this animal’s main bodily fluids. They store energy, nutrients and oxygen for it. A lot. What I still can’t fathom is whether this beast came to be on its own, or whether it was designed by another sentient god like me.

Another one, discreet, probably somewhere in western Europe. Early and likely faster than I was into coming to be and learning how to play with life. I can’t say if this god exists.

One of the heads wakes up, noticing my presence as I kept probing everything about it or them for a long time now.

I notice an ominous wave of stimuli coming my way like a shiver along its spine. I pull back.

The scales all twitch along with its muscles. A twitch, a shiver, nothing more. I was itching it. It relaxes afterward without a care about my presence.

Now that I know where the heads are, and that I know it’s not very hostile, I want to get even closer to its head to study its brain.

I venture through the ruins of the city like any other silent shade. I can’t appreciate the sights as I used to, but I can still be amazed a little.

The jungle of concrete and steel has become the spongy grounds for a swarm of moulds and moss, turning it slowly into a hybrid of ruins and forests as rich in variety as any other jungle.

Around the flooded levels of the streets and sea, the city is crumbling slowly into mounds, hills and channels.

Some fluorescent lifeforms in the water scatter as they feel my approach.

I avoid the most toxic areas but it’s really random and uneven down here. All along my way, the body of the two headed snake rests peacefully. As if its situation had always been meant for it.

Around the purple park where one strain wins the competition and grows bigger structures like a new form of mushroom.

Inside the garden of a block of tower, I reach a head.

It inhales and exhales slowly.

My shapeless form takes anchor there.

I mean you no harm, I just want to see what’s inside your brain...

Eyelids open themselves. Vertically first, horizontally next. An eye the size of a human is revealed.

Its pupil focuses on me.

Another thrill runs along its ever so long spine.

I give myself more presence, so it can better see me.

She... transformed me. So much it hurts. I bear a grin as weights returns to my approximation of a human body.

I give myself even more presence. Some more weight. Some colours. Hair over a head and face.

The eye is bigger than me, analysing what it sees as I appear progressively out of a shift in the air.

Its iris is iridescent and the colours are changing endlessly. Only the pupil remains dark, absorbing everything it can. It sees T.I. I can tell. It could see my shape before I made a body. But now I’m physical just like it.

Lips move, slightly. Its neck gets more tensed. It thinks I could be a threat.

This thing is already far more docile than I ever was, but not one I could prevail head on against currently.

I’m usually out for blood in the literal sense, not the expression. That befits my sister better.

Now I try to convey that again. I’m not a warmonger. I just want to learn from you without harm.

The giant snake hears me, relaxes, and feels sleepy again.

The head returns to rest and the eyelids mostly close themselves. Mostly.

It keeps a small opening and a corner of its sight on me. That’s understandable.

It exhales. I hear its reply. I can smile.

As long as I don’t bother it, I can do whatever I want.

So I proceed to scan its brain in the least intrusive way possible. I want to know what you are...

I briefly think back about the child I left behind, whom won’t benefit from what I learn here now.

It doesn’t matter. She’ll be fine.

In this world and the next.

~